A Red-necked Green Bird

The Crow with a Swollen Throat

As soon as she placed the dosaikal, the frying pan, on the stove top, it would appear. As she started pouring the batter for the first dosai, it would begin to caw. Not caw caw. For some time, it would go krrk. For some time, khk. Some time it would go clalak as if gargling. Sometimes it would prattle kangg kangg. She was startled one day when it said ka…ll…lu. That was how her father used to call her. She, who would normally throw a few pieces to it and then chase it away, looked carefully at it that day. In the beginning, she used to think that there couldn’t be much difference between one crow and another. Now, when she looked keenly, it seemed as if this one had some unique identification marks. Above the neck and on the wing on one side it had a pale grey streak. The throat was quite swollen. When given something to eat, unlike other crows, it tilted its head, looking up, and swallowed it. It shook its head when the food went down its throat. It would rest for a minute as if to catch its breath and then bend down to take another mouthful. Again, looking up, swallowing, and the shaking of the head.

In the monsoons, it would stay on top of her kitchen window. It would sleep with its beaks slightly open. If, instead of giving it the crisp salty biscuits, she gave it glucose biscuits, it would straighten up and turn its face away. It would also accept only freshly cooked rice. If you gave it leftover pulao or biryani that you had ordered the previous night and stored in the fridge, it would look at it and fly away protesting kakkkr. It wouldn’t eat anything given from the fridge. It really liked roasted potato or yam. For vadai or appalam, it would come as soon as the oil was heating. It loved chips. Would ask for more. In return, it would leave a bone on the window sill. This was a gourmet crow. A crow that would bathe enthusiastically, beating its wings again and again, in the water poured into the broad flower pot in the terrace.

It would arrive exactly when the Sangeet Sarita programme would be broadcast on Vividh Bharti. The mobile would normally be kept next to the window. It would perch very near the window on the days when the programme compared Hindustani and Carnatic ragas. She would wonder if it was a South Indian crow that had migrated to Maharashtra.

Suddenly, one day, like an incision, the thought streaked across her mind. Was it a crow at all?

‘Food, I want food…’ Appa’s screams. When she entered his room, his nurse was trying to pacify him. ‘You ate just now, didn’t you, Ayya? Didn’t I give you rice, rasam, appalam, everything?’ Her father saw her entering and shouted, ‘Food…’ She sat next to him, ‘Appa, have you forgotten? Today there was pepper rasam, cluster beans poriyal with coconut the way you like it. And rice-appalam…’

‘What about paruppu thuvayal?’ He asked.

‘That too. You ate just now.’

‘How come my hand does not smell of food?’

‘You used a spoon, Appa.’

‘Didn’t eat…’ he said loudly.

‘You have forgotten, Appa.’

‘You are cheating me,’ he said. ‘You are starving an old man to death.’

She took his hands and placed them on her eyes. Her eyes filled up.

He pulled back his hands.

She got up and went and mixed the thuvayal in a little rice and brought it. She fed him a handful.

‘Now I remember. I have eaten.’ He said.

‘Ok, can I go to college?’

‘Sure. You must study well and pass your B.A.’

‘Appa, after completing B.A., and M.A., and doing my PhD, I am a professor now.’

He was surprised.

‘But you told me that you hadn’t answered well the question about nature scenes in Shakuntala?’

‘That’s right. I lost marks there.’

‘You don’t know how much I had to struggle to educate myself,’ he said. Then, the usual story.

When she was a little girl, after putting off the lights at night, he would lie down next to her and patting her to sleep, he would tell her the grandmother story. Not the story about the vadai fried by the paatti taken away by the crow who lost it to the wily fox. This was his amma’s story.

When her thatha, who was a teacher, died, Appa was only fourteen years old. He had three older brothers, two older sisters, and a younger brother. The sisters were involved with their respective families. The older brothers were still in college. It was then that his mother took up the business of vending milk and making appalam and snacks for festivals and other special days, for a living. It was then that the smell of oil entered their house.

With the radio playing songs, she would make murukkus on the spread-out vaetti. Or press and pat thattai on it for deep frying. Or squeeze out steamed rice dough from a mould for vadagam. Or make appalams. All five children would help her by taking balls of the dough and rolling it out into circles for the appalam. She would lose herself a bit to the music if it was Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer. She would hum along.

When her eyes closed, listening to her father’s story, she would feel as if she could smell oil in the room. As if Paatti’s kaimurukku was melting in her mouth. As if someone had planted the seed in her some time, Neelambari ragam would sprout in her being.

Amma was a yellowed old photo on the wall, curly haired and broad-zaried saree.

‘Mathematics Honours in Presidency. Didn’t even have slippers for my feet. By then, Amma had started her idli shop. In the verandah. In the morning, idli with milagaipodi, and with four dosais and onion thuvaiyal in hand…’

Appa’s story would lengthen.

‘Appa, can I leave?’

‘Where to?’

‘For college.’

‘Ok. Study hard. You must pass.’

‘Ok, Appa.’

The loss of memory came slowly like dark clouds descending.

Suddenly one day, he asked, ‘It is ten o’clock. Why hasn’t your mother returned yet? Why so long to buy vegetables?’

Amma was hanging on the wall in front of him.

He began to forget where he kept things. Keys, scissors, glasses, books, slippers…then he forgot whether he had brushed his teeth. That he had drunk coffee. That he had oiled his hair. That he had eaten.

He lived in a different time. He remembered that his mother would crush the murukku to powder to eat after she lost her teeth. When you make brinjal poriyal with a lot of oil, you should not lower the flame. The stove should be on high. You must keep stirring continuously. He informed her about the recipe. He spoke of the corruption he had found in government accounts. He gave her an account of the setting up of banks in India with complete details. He would read the daily newspaper and talk of a hundred years earlier. He would tell her she must make it a point to go and meet Dr Muthulakshmi. He told her how Sarojini Naidu was twelve years old when she stood first in the Matriculation Examination conducted by Madras University. He spoke of Gauhar Jaan coming to Chennai. He gave his opinions about Nehru and Gandhi and Periyar. He spoke constantly, without slacking.

Ever since she could remember, Appa was a foodie. The house would always be stocked with snacks like murukku, thenguzhal, muthusaram and omapodi. He needed a plateful of snacks with evening tea. On festivals, he needed the banana leaf filled with appam, cheedai, athirasam, vadai and nenthiranga chips. The lady who cooked for them at home got tired making all this. And he needed music along with it too.

Food and music filled his mind. Some days, he would say that he wanted to attend an M.D. Ramanathan concert. He asked why M.L. Vasanthakumari doesn’t sing nowadays.

One evening he disappeared. After searching the beach, bookshop, bus stops, and various other places, he was found outside Kapali Temple singing loudly, ‘Velayundo endru koovi veeethiyil vanthaan—Sundaran.’ There were some coins and fruits lying on the ground in front of him.

It was only after that that arrangements were made for a nurse to look after him. Sometimes, he would think of the nurse as his wife. Sometimes he would mistake the nurse for her and call her, ‘Kallu…Kalyani.’ His mind would glow suddenly for a few moments. Then he would take some paper and write something. And would forget having written.

First, unable to swallow, he spat out the banana. He coughed constantly when he ate. They came to know that he had cancer in his throat. He didn’t have the strength to withstand the treatment. He was bedridden at home. Wherever she went, she worried about him. She would run if the nurse called. If you raised his head and fed him slowly, it would go in somehow finding its way. You had to shut the kitchen door when you seasoned a dish or when you made dosai. He would still ask in a feeble tone, ‘What is for food today?’ He would ask for the eeya chatty, the tin vessel in which rasam was prepared, to be brought near his nose. He would breathe in the smell deeply.

One early morning, when she was giving him coffee very slowly, her hand moved a bit fast for a moment, and he pressed her hand hard. He looked at her. The coffee did not go down his throat.

She had had two love affairs then. They had come as huge waves and pulled her away. She drowned with ease without even fighting for her breath. ‘Your life is fully occupied with your father, he doesn’t leave you space for anything else,’ when they complained, she learnt to reach ashore. But the waves still called out to her. When she was clearing Appa’s stuff, she found the note. The only surviving note among those that he wrote whenever his mind cleared for a moment:

‘I can see that the path is long. I can’t see my way. Dark. A dense forest that hides all paths. I have forgotten my destination. It is somewhere in the distance. If I remembered its name, I would have some solace. But does it have a name? If I know its name, will I find the way?’

She came to Mumbai as a principal of a college. The waves of that ocean of love did dash against her heart at times.

It was then that the crow appeared. The crow that brought together the many threads that had separated. The crow that blew into her heart sparks that had become the past. It came every day and reminded her of something. It constantly cawed as if was directing her down various paths of memory. One day, she lost her temper for the first time. She felt as if she was being pursued. Her mother, Visalam, who was a hazy memory, her father who used to talk and whine incessantly and whose throat had constricted, his bare feet, the note about the unknown path, the huge wave moments of love, the fruits and coins lying in front of Appa outside the temple, the rasam vessel extended to his nose, his attempts to eat tilting his head up, the murukku Paatti had made on the spread-out vaetti, the sound links of music that continued from Paatti’s times, the coffee that dripped from Appa’s mouth, she felt as if all these strands came together, twisted into a rope and lashed her in that crow’s cawing.

‘Get lost. I can’t stand your harassment,’ she shouted. She slammed the window shut.

The crow never returned.

One day, when she was travelling by bus, it stopped at a red light. Everyone looked through the windows at the footpath on the left side. When she too looked, she spotted a crow lying on the ground, its wings spread out. In the area above the neck and on one wing it had a pale grey streak. Its throat was swollen. With its beaks open, it was struggling. Two small boys from the slum were looking at it. The bus passengers shouted, ‘Panidya, panidya’ (Give it water, give it water). ‘Pani naahi aahe’ (there is no water), replied the children. A motorbike, attempting to avoid the red light and turn left, got on to the footpath. The motorbike rider and the passenger were in a hurry. The passenger was shouting ‘Faster, faster,’ and the one driving the bike swerved a bit and rode over the crow and sped off. Some people on the bus exclaimed loudly, ‘Haa!’ The crow wasn’t dead. Something like tears flowed out of its eyes. Do crows cry? When someone from the bus held out a bottle of water, the crow’s head fell slowly and got buried in its wings.

Out of the blue came flying a loudly cawing screeching murder of crows.

The City that Rises from Ashes

When she returned from college there was a crowd in front of the block of flats. She could hear the loudly expressed opinions, ‘I always knew this would happen’, as well as the assents, as also stray words from those standing apart and conversing in low tones. As soon as they noticed her, they moved away from the staircase and waited for her question.

‘What happened?’ she asked quietly.

Seventy-year-old Pramod Sonkar came forward to reply.

‘Madam, Urmila Tai has committed suicide.’

She was stunned. Only this morning she had met Urmila on the way down from her flat. She had asked Urmila if she wanted her to buy any vegetables, bread or fruit on the way back from college. She would ask her this every day. Urmila was seventy-five years old. Further, she had to take care of her ninety-five-year-old-mother-in-law. The mother-in-law was bed-ridden. The mother-in-law had been her responsibility for twenty years, ever since